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As video game adaptations become more and more lucrative for Hollywood, it’s going to be a given that people will start asking whoever’s attached if they either have, or plan to, play the games they’re adapting. Just don’t count on Walton Goggins being one of those people.
The actor, who plays the standout Cooper Howard/The Ghoul on Prime Video’s Fallout show, had previously stated coming into the show’s first season that he had no intent of touching the Fallout games as preparation, especially considering that Cooper was by and large an original character for the show—shaped by ideas and moments from Fallout‘s worldbuilding, but not cut from entirely the same cloth.
But then Fallout became huge, and now the race to incorporate elements from the adaptation back into the games is on. That includes Goggins himself, who recently reprised his role from the show as part of a new update for Fallout 76, Burning Springs. Does working on the games, and the show’s success, change Goggins’ outlook on touching them? The answer remains a resounding “No.”
“No, I haven’t sat down to play the games,” the actor recently told PC Gamer when asked. “And I won’t. I won’t. I won’t play the games. I’m not interested.”
Goggins’ reason as to why remains compelling: to him, the experience of play, especially as a performer, is a radically different one from inhabiting a role for film and TV—and he doesn’t think audiences are served well if he were to start treating his Fallout performance as being the same.
“[If I play the games] all of a sudden, I’m looking at this world from a very different perspective, and as something on a screen in which I am an avatar in,” Goggins continued. “I don’t believe that I’m an avatar. I believe The Ghoul exists in the world. I believe that Cooper Howard exists in the world… the best way that I can serve this world and serve the fans of this game, I think, is to go to work every single day and believe the circumstances that I’m presented with.”
So don’t go flinging a copy of New Vegas at him any time soon.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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Source: Gizmodo